


when my time comes around (lay me gently in the cold dark earth)

by bymine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Gansey is dead, M/M, gansey is/was very loved by everyone always
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 18:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bymine/pseuds/bymine
Summary: gansey dies. they cope.





	when my time comes around (lay me gently in the cold dark earth)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in two days. remember before trk when dead!gansey was like a thingTM? guess i'm kinda late to the trend lol, anyway. i miss my child gansey.  
title from work song, by hozier.

Gansey died.

And somehow, he took the ley lines with him.

It took them a while to realize that the magic that once surrounded them died in that cave too.

Adam noticed it first, he thinks.

He noticed when the buzzing of Cabeswater in his left ear - ever-present, ever awake - stopped.

They were in the cave; It was warm and humid and heavy.

The only light came from the flashlight Blue was holding, theirs had gone out, one by one, and hers was the only one left.

The irrational part of him, the little boy constantly locked up on that trailer, wished for darkness. The light misshaped their outlines; they were too tall, took up too much space, the cave felt claustrophobic somehow. Shadow covered walls were closing in on them and he was the only one noticing.

They had divided like the red sea, Adam and Ronan on one side, Blue and Henry in the other, and Gansey in the middle.

Gwenllian’s voice echoed in his mind, make way for the raven king.

Glendower was dead.

Had been dead for a very long.

“Perhaps…” Gansey started, his thumb worrying over his bottom lip, face covered in sweat and dirt. He looked radiant.

His hand hovered over the tomb, almost tracing the bones but not really, a ghost of a touch.

“This is the king I sought,” he said, quietly.

Adam looked away.

Cabeswater sang in his mind. It danced and twirled and flourished. He could feel it.  
It started in his hands, covered his wrists and wrapped itself around his waist, the knowledge that something, was happening. Powerful and loud.

At that moment he understood, Gansey knew. Maybe he knew ever since he was a kid, maybe he found out when he listened to that tape. Adam wasn’t sure, but he was certain that Gansey knew. He knew he would die. He wanted to live - longed for it, craved it - but he knew. How long had he lived with the certainty of his own death? Not as some far away concept, but with the same inevitability of waking up.

“Wake up,” Gansey said, but his voice was different, older, bigger.

Unrecognizable.

Nothing happened.

The cave was still a cave; the bones were still just bones.

But something felt different.

Then Gansey looked at Blue and asked for a favor.

Because that’s what Glendower would have done. And Blue said yes, because that’s what Blue would always do.

After, he would remember how he felt Cabeswater in the end.

Amabo te, it said, one last time. Then silence.

And after that, it’s hell.

It was like he had just tripped and he knew he would hit the ground, it just hasn’t happened yet. So he waited, falling and falling and falling, for a thud that would never come.

He spent the rest of the week with no balance.

Bumping into Malory during the funeral, tripping over Helen trying to get to Gansey’s room, and falling over on the way to Ronan’s car.

Finally, it comes.

The thud.

He was alone at Mournmouth, lying in Ronan’s bed. The windows were open and a small breeze swayed around the room. From where he laid, he could see the Henrietta miniature in the living-room.

He expected to see Gansey, moving around barefoot, glasses crooked and hair disheveled, the sound of his footsteps filling the air.

But it was all silence.

It hit him, then, that Gansey was gone.

Theoretically, he knew that Ganey was dead; he had been there at the funeral. It was just that, his body was too numb to notice it, blissfully ignorant to the turmoil in his mind. Now, it burned.

He couldn’t keep it all inside of him anymore.

His heart trumped, loud loud loud.

His ears rang, louder louder louder.

Then it was over.

Ronan noticed second.

In the cave, after, he isn’t sure how they get out. His mind crowded. All he can recall is Blue holding his hand, Adam touching his face, Henry calling his name.

He wants to punch something or someone. And he wants to scream, lose his voice and never speak again. He wants the outside to match the chaos inside of him.

He digs inside his bag, hands shaky, and finds his phone. He calls Declan, because there is no one else.

Maura is the one who comes first because she felt it. The Gray Man is there too because he saw it. Declan comes later, in the middle of the night, because Ronan called.

The aftermath is the worse.

There are police cars and reporters.

Promising Aglionby alumni (and Senator’s son) lost in a terrible caving accident,

Declan is the one to arrange everything. He drives them to DC, kisses Helen on the cheek, holds a sobbing Mrs. Gansey, shakes Richard’s hands. Pays for a search and rescue team with his own money. Talks to the press, throws around words like brilliant mind and terrible loss.

Ronan watches.

After the funeral, he permanently moved to the Barns. Declan was back in Washington with Ashley and Matthew… he’d rather not think about it.

It was late, and he hasn’t slept in a while.

He lies in bed, his body ached, sleep cursed though his veins but the mere thought of closing his eyes frightened him. His chest felt closed and constricted.

When he was a kid, he was so full of love he dreamed an entire person, a being of light, alive and breathing and there.

Later, when he was older, troubled and inexperienced, he had brought a night horror to life.

Now, he’s terrified of his own mind.

But still he missed Opal. He knew she would guide and protect him.

He closed his eyes.

He didn’t dream that night, or the next one or the next one or the next one.

When he woke up, he knew.

His mind felt barren and crowded, confined and liberated.

The crater in his chest shallows him whole.

He called Declan. They couldn’t find Matthew, Aurora was long gone and Niall was dead. He was the only one left.

Henry notices last.

It’s a metallurgical process, slow and steady.

He feels disconnected.

Alone.

As if he wasn’t all entirely there.

Vacant.

For the first time in a long time, he feels afraid. An old terror that settles in his bones, sinks inside his chest and wraps its ugly claws around his throat. He thinks of being ten again; he remembers fear so vividly; He tastes it in his tongue, bitter, mixed with saliva and bile.

He thinks of Gansey.

They never find his body.

Henry thinks it’s better like that. He likes the mystery, the secrecy of it all. He is sure Gansey would’ve appreciated it too.

Every day he thinks of Gansey.

During those last moments, inside of that cave, it was as if he was watching everything unfold from above. He was there, but he wasn’t, and while he watched, something inside of him stirred. Deeper, below the fear.

He looked around and he saw, in each of their faces, and maybe on his own.

They would do everything for Gansey if he asked them to. Even if it meant watching him die.

And that’s what they did.

This is what he will keep on doing for the rest of his life, he thinks.

After, they go together to the funeral. That’s how the function these days, as a unity instead of individuals. Adam brushes their shoulders together, Blue lays her head on his chest, and Ronan is staring at him. He doesn’t know where his grieve ends and where their starts. It’s better this way.

He watches the quiet devotion in Ronan’s face, the fierce adoration in Adam’s eyes and the soft longing in Blue’s mouth and he wonders what we would find in his own face.

He feels warm and loved and cared and so on.

But something feels lacking, empty.

His mother is there too, but he only notices it later, sitting next to Ronan’s older brother. They looked perturbed, scared.

She had been acting strange since that day in the cave, distracted and worried. He really wants to hug her.

She approaches them, and asks to talk to him alone, says she wants to move back to Vancouver, has some business to deal with. She asks him to come with her. He says no. She asks him to be anywhere else but here.

He wants to stay, so desperately, he wants to belong, to be known. But he knows he can’t.

He agrees.

It’s a conundrum, really.

How do you continue belonging somewhere when what kept you there is gone?

“Where is RoboBee?” she asks, rushed, voice quiet, and he has to come closer to listen.  
He touches his pockets, empty, he palms his entire body, nothing.

Panic.

It sinks deep inside of him.

Then it clicks.

He no longer feels the buzz in his veins, the electricity in the air.

He feels ordinary.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find it,” he tells her.

In a split second, his heart decides on it even before his mind can properly conjure up the thought, he would find his own raven king and he would wake up Gansey.

Blue isn’t sure when she notices, because, in a way, she had always known.

She knew even before his lips touched hers, before she tasted his tongue, mint and memories.

When she opened her eyes, and he wasn’t there anymore, she still held his body—heavy, warm, and empty.

Later, they are outside on the porch, it’s her last time visiting Barns, the sun is high and hot, Blue’s skin feels like it’s going to melt off of her, she is laying on the grass next to Henry, her arm covering her face and she can hear Adam and Ronan whispering to each other.

She can’t see but she feels them.

She isn’t a mirror anymore but there is a new clarity surrounding her.

Deep inside, she finally understands. Gansey may not be present anymore but he lives inside of her, dancing in her lungs as the air she breathes, wandering inside her body as the blood in her veins, her fingertips spell his name.

He is in everything she is.

He grew roots, planted seeds and bloomed in her.

And now there isn’t a single part of her that doesn’t love him.

Adam and Ronan talk in hushed voices, a goodbye perhaps; she does her best to tune it out. Instead, she focuses on the grass below her.

Adam is going to an Ivy League school in a few months, full-ride scholarship. He is going to get a law degree and never return to Henrietta, she hopes. He lost too much here; he deserves more than what his town has given him.

Ronan will stay.

Henry is leaving in an hour; he is going to catch the next flight to somewhere. She doesn’t ask, isn’t sure she really wants to know. She doesn’t think of what-ifs and what could have been’s. He offers to take her places, she declines. He offers to take her home; she accepts.

This is a goodbye, she thinks.

It felt fitting somehow, that Gansey’s life had united them and his death that taken that away.

She doesn’t think of Noah. But sometimes, something flashes out to of corner of her eye, flashes of blond sandy hair, smudgy face and sad eyes, and then nothing.

She thinks she sees him, the other day, walking around town; he looked older, taller, and brighter. She doesn’t mention it to anyone, isn’t really sure it was him, anyway.  
While their memory of Gansey is gold and vibrant, Noah is merely a shadow, blurry, like a song you can vaguely remember the melody but not the lyrics. What color were his eyes? Did he even have a last name?

She can’t remember.

The memory of him is fading.

Ronan calls out her name, Henry helps her stand up.

The nightmares turned into trees. Adam’s left ear is just silence

**Author's Note:**

> as always, pls contact me if you catch any mistakes!! i'l prob come back to this someday and actually edit it.


End file.
